1. Threads will remain in the main wishlist section while being discussed. After being reviewed by the Devs for initial feasibility, and depending on thread activity, the thread may be moved into one of the two subsections
    How to post your idea:
    Create a thread with a clear title that describes what the idea is about. Only one idea per thread!
    Please specify either in the title of the thread (if there is space) or at the very top of your post, what type of idea it is, For example: Housing (Houses, Lots, etc)
    Example title: Housing: Epic Keep and Castle Size Homes other than Pirate Ships
    Be sure to include details about your idea. Devs, and or players may reply to your thread asking additional questions, so please be willing to provide more details.
    Please see the sticky thread marked **READ FIRST** for more details...

Please Greatly Increase Adventurer Exp in Lower Tier Zones

Discussion in 'Wishlist Requests' started by Wilfred, Jan 9, 2021.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Wilfred

    Wilfred Avatar

    Messages:
    556
    Likes Received:
    1,025
    Trophy Points:
    63
    -
    Currently, only high level players can get decent Adventurer XP playing solo.
    Everyone else must join a group doing Eastreach Gap or some other control point in order to get decent XP.

    Doing control points with a group gets really boring after a few days.

    It should be possible for any player (no matter what their level) to get decent XP in any scene, whether playing solo or in a group.
    That way players can make progress without having to join a group, and can spend their time playing in whatever scenes they want.

    Please make it much easier to get Adventurer XP in lower tier zones, so that a solo player steadily slaying enemies at normal combat speed gets XP at a rate of:

    Tier 1 Scenes - 2 million XP per 50 minutes
    Tier 2 Scenes - 4 million XP per 50 minutes
    Tier 3 Scenes - 6 million XP per 50 minutes
    Tier 4 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) per 50 minutes
    Tier 5 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) per 45 minutes

    Tier 10 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) per 30 minutes
    Tier 15 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) per 15 minutes

    ----------
     
    Cirsee, Lord Stein, Gravidy and 3 others like this.
  2. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    I don't disagree with the underlying sentiment, that progression shouldn't be tied to "do Eastreach Gap till your eyes bleed, or don't bother." But with these values, spending like, one day playing even killing trivial crap in a Tier 1 would bypass like, most of the game's content in terms of challenge (assuming you're starting at level 1. Level 80's only like 15 mil).

    Honestly I think this is part of what's wrong with the game at the moment, quadruple-xp from the original rates has made it so that exp doesn't mean anything unless you're raking it in in the billions. There's certainly no point in logging in and doing anything by myself anymore, progession wise. I don't think getting more exp in Tier 5 is going to change that.
     
  3. Wilfred

    Wilfred Avatar

    Messages:
    556
    Likes Received:
    1,025
    Trophy Points:
    63
    It depends on how you define the challenge.

    If you define the challenge as "Trying not to die all the time.", then I agree that increasing XP rates would quickly remove the challenge from lower tier scenes. But if you define the challenge as "How fast can I clear this group of enemies?" or "How quickly can I attenuate?", then there is still a challenge. And I think it is more fun when players can make good progress. :)

    As players gains XP, there will be lower tier scenes where the fighting is easy, scenes where they can barely survive, and higher tier scenes where they are not yet strong enough to survive. So there are always scenes where a player can go to challenge their ability to survive. Players with more XP are just able to access more of the game content.

    To survive in some higher tier scenes, players need billions of Adventurer XP. Even when gaining XP as fast as possible (attenuating at about 8 million XP per hour), it still takes hundreds or thousands of hours of play time to get enough XP to survive in some of the higher tier scenes.

    Players can already bypass the challenge of surviving in lower tier scenes by joining a group to do control points. But joining a control point group is currently the only way that most players can get XP at the attenuated rate. So increasing XP in lower tier scenes would just give players more options to gain XP at the best rate without having to group up.

    If players could attenuate with solo play in any scene at Tier 4 and above, there would be a bunch of scenes where they could choose to play without worrying about getting XP fast enough. Higher level players would just be able to attenuate faster, so they would have more time to craft and decorate between XP runs.

    I think it would be nice if I could pick almost any scene in the game, run around slaying enemies, and know that I am gaining XP as fast as possible. :)
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2021
    Gravidy and Lord Stein like this.
  4. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    I don't disagree with the need to make solo play relevant, however I think its a bit silly to be getting a grandmaster per hour in a Tier 1. The entire progression rate becomes trivial at that point - it would be like logging into a game with a level 50 cap, say, and getting to said cap without leaving the starter area. "Press space to jump, press X to attack ....DING, you are level 50." I know shroud has no "cap" per se, and I know people will "do it anyway" by dragging themselves to a control point, but I feel like you miss out on the whole interesting part of the game that way.

    I remember getting to adventure level 100 - after nearly a year of 30-50k xp per hour while I did my thing, harvested, explored, etc. I enjoyed the game a lot more back then. You couldn't get in a hurry, not really. I met people along the way. I put down roots. People I've tried to bring to the game since we've been in xp bonanza mode never get that experience.

    I completely embrace the spirit of your suggestion, that it should not be significantly better to stand around a control point with a group of people and press a few buttons, than it should be to do something more active and probably more challenging on your own. I'm just not sure how we get there. If we nerf exp levels across the board, there will be outrage, and I'm never in favor of nerfing when there are alternatives such as making other things better. But I think getting your first grandmaster in less than an hour in a Tier 1 just goes way past ridiculous. When we were capped at a million an hour (attenuation) it mattered a lot less where you went. I think it was a better game in the old days. But when 100 million experience gained isn't enough to noticably improve your character in any way, it became pointless, thus the desire for more and more and more. Thus here we are.

    Its not an easy solution, but I feel like people already blitz past 99.9% of the game's content. I'm not in favor of making that even worse. But there needs to be some way to incentivize doing something other than standing at a CP. It certainly isn't fun, but its so much more lucrative than the next best activity then people either a) endure it or b) play something else.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2021
    Gravidy, Anpu, Lord Aventine and 2 others like this.
  5. Wilfred

    Wilfred Avatar

    Messages:
    556
    Likes Received:
    1,025
    Trophy Points:
    63
    I agree. It's rather silly how much XP inflation there has been.

    On the one hand, most new players are going to get in a control point group as quickly as possible, so they will very quickly level past the lower tier scenes.

    On the other hand, there are now high level scenes up to Tier 18, and even higher level scenes may be on the way, so even if new players are getting 8 million XP per hour, they will still need to spend hundreds of hours grinding XP before they can survive in the highest tier scenes.

    At this point, I think everything up to adventure level 80 is just an expanded tutorial, and GM adventure level 100 is basic competency. :)

    But if we went back to a lower XP cap, it would take way too long for new players to get enough XP to survive in the highest tier scenes.

    Right now, the lower tier scenes are pretty much useless after a player has spent a short time gaining XP in a control point. I think increasing the XP in these lower tier scenes would actually make them useful again, by turning them into areas where players could go to grind XP.

    And the game really needs some alternate ways to grind XP, because grinding with a control point group gets incredibly boring very quickly.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2021
  6. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    See, I think its SUPPOSED to take a long time for a new player to be able to do the end game content.
    That's how you retain players beyond a couple of weeks/months - by making the journey take longer than that.
    I know the counter to that is that new players "can't catch up" until they put in the time - but even with all the acceleration and xp bonanzas and stuff that we have, that's still the case, and worsened by the fact that the gear climb is even steeper with legendary artifacts and other nonsense.

    If you can get to the end game in a week, and you fiddle with it for a couple more weeks to see what loot falls out (answer: in shroud, not a lot...) then you're essentially done playing. No more goals, and no way dev team can keep coming up with new interesting content at a faster pace than players consume it.

    I think where we both agree there's a problem is the focus on CPs as the end all, do all way to advance being orders of magnitude better exp than anything else. But I definitely am one that prefers long-term retention and a slow, epic journey over a wham bam reached-the-cap-in-a-few-weeks I beat the game sort. I consume MMORPGs at a fearsome rate generally speaking, Shroud (well, vanilla Shroud?) is the only one that held interest beyond a couple months precisely because the progression was slower.

    I guess the question is, will it be better for the game if new players can come in and reach end game in a week or two of effort. Do we think that will get them to stay longer, spend more? I personally don't, I think its the wrong direction. Maybe if we had an endless influx of interested players downloading the game. Its a difficult issue for sure.

    And what do we do with the dozens of Tier 1-4 scenes that nobody will ever see? Should we rebalance all of those to levels players might actually want to bother with ? The majority of the places you can go become completely pointless after about adventure level 70ish, and with the double double quest bonus xp levels, you're reaching that before you even finish outskirts....

    Further acceleration I feel will let people reach "the end" sooner, the end in this context being, when they're finished and ready to move on to the next game. This really discourages long term investment imo, I certainly wouldn't have spent what I spent on deco, property, a town, etc. if I thought I'd be done with this game in a month.

    But considering where we are and how things stand now - maybe you're right. If we accelerate it enough, exp will cease to be a relevant thing at all. But then we need to rethink the reward mechanisms for going and killing stuff, because right now, exp is pretty much it...
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2021
    Alley Oop, Wilfred and Anpu like this.
  7. Beaumaris

    Beaumaris Avatar

    Messages:
    4,289
    Likes Received:
    7,415
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Caladruin
    I agree with Kaeshiva's points.

    The 'game' here can appear to be the skill leveling treadmill. But that's a hollow reward only. Perhaps more than other MMOs, SOTA's sweet spot is in the journey, not the destination.
     
    Wilfred likes this.
  8. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

    Messages:
    7,944
    Likes Received:
    9,015
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Hemut
    If I recall correctly, the existing lower level scenes could utilize the Area Scaling System. That’s what was talked about at least.

    That new system is not fully working however yet.......
     
    Cordelayne, FrostII and Wilfred like this.
  9. Wilfred

    Wilfred Avatar

    Messages:
    556
    Likes Received:
    1,025
    Trophy Points:
    63
    I agree. I think we may be using different estimates for how much time and XP is needed to get to the end game content.

    For myself, I am currently Adventurer Level 125, and I am still stuck doing control point groups with no end in sight. However, I don't like min-maxing. I like to try out all the skills, so my character is a jack of all trades. Also, I'm not a skilled fighter. I would much rather be crafting or puttering around with deco, so my preferred fighting style is to grind and level my skills until I am overpowered enough to crush the enemies without too much effort.

    I've been going on the assumption that I will probably need at least 5 to 10 billion Adventurer XP to survive in the highest level scenes.

    5 billion XP / 8 million XP per hour = 625 hours
    10 billion XP / 8 million XP per hour = 1,250 hours

    Is 5 to 10 billion XP a reasonable estimate for XP needed to survive and fight in the highest tier scenes? Or how much XP does it take to fight in the highest tier scenes?

    Is there a calculator somewhere for converting between Adventurer Level and XP amount?

    Edit: Also, is there anywhere I could currently do solo grinding with decent XP?
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2021
  10. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    Yeah, this is part of what's got me away from the game entirely at the moment.
    I'm not up for doing hundreds of hours of repetitive group content just so I can survive new places that aren't really any more rewarding than old places (and then, if and only if I'm willing to use one of the handful of builds that can do it).
    The problem as I see it, is everything that's added is being added for those handful of frontrunners, and nobody else can do it. Solution then is to accelerate xp so more people can get there. But by doing so, the frontrunners get even more ahead as they actually benefit more from the double/quadruple by virtue of considerably more playtime. So then the next content push has even more impossible stuff. Its disappointing that 95% of the scenes in the game are "not worth the time" in terms of rewards because of this methodology.
     
    FrostII, Anpu and Wilfred like this.
  11. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

    Messages:
    1,792
    Likes Received:
    3,729
    Trophy Points:
    113
    :p
     
    Anpu likes this.
  12. Adam Crow

    Adam Crow Avatar

    Messages:
    1,792
    Likes Received:
    3,729
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Basically balls were dropped and here we are......... what cracks me up is players like @kaeshiva are still doing other things? Do you have reasons why you aren't playing? Are you done? Is it all over? Time to give up?
     
  13. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

    Messages:
    3,054
    Likes Received:
    11,752
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    I wouldn't still be coming around here if I'd given up hope...;)
     
    Adam Crow, Anpu and Wilfred like this.
  14. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    The approach is more playing it by ear, as we seem to do with many things. We're adjusting the knobs almost nonstop. There ought to be some kind of framework and plan behind the scenes and how difficult vs rewarding they are. We're getting to a point where we may as well just make all new characters AL100.

    There's a of logistical issues that could be solved with level caps. There's a lot of replayability to be had under games that have them. I've played games where people had a dozen or so characters, where the skill progression is locked, and the fun is trying a different character type and skillset out. I've played 7 Days to Die over and over despite a lack of end-game content and skill caps.

    In WoW classic, I'm approaching level 60 on my one character. The zones and leveling and XP system are extremely balanced. What will I do when I reach that? Probably start a new character with a different class.

    ... but in SOTA, you're pressured have one character that has all skills and no caps. It makes starting a new character feel like a complete waste of time. Ideas like cranking the XP gains in lower tiered zones make things worse, in my opinion, more because it's amplifying the worse aspects of the game design.
     
  15. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    OR maybe put another way... the only thing worse than hard caps is infinite progression.
     
  16. FBohler

    FBohler Avatar

    Messages:
    1,213
    Likes Received:
    1,264
    Trophy Points:
    113
    While I think XP scaling through the game should get buffed to fight ERG, the numbers proposed in the OP are bonkers, would cause a huge power creep and the 100 first adv levels would last only a week or so for any common player. Not to mention players playing lower tier content over and over again because it's not efficient to go to a harder scene and get the same-ish XP.
     
  17. Cirsee

    Cirsee Avatar

    Messages:
    484
    Likes Received:
    1,013
    Trophy Points:
    43
    Gender:
    Female
    Maybe lockout timers for certain group zones/activities? I am not even high enough that I can get in those groups sadly, despite casually playing (yes and grouping) over the years. Most games give us a cap to skills/levels. Then there is an alternate leveling passive skill lines for other games like Alternate Ability for EQ or Champion point for ESO, FF14 has alternate classes you can swap in and out of and advanced levels for those. Some games do nothing above a level cap and you just go for the loot or other benefits to your character like faction rewards and that like. Maybe its time to put a hard cap and switch experience to something like faction or a passive increase?
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2021
  18. Wilfred

    Wilfred Avatar

    Messages:
    556
    Likes Received:
    1,025
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Here's an alternative option. How about doubling the Adventurer XP every tier up to Tier 5.

    Something like this:

    Tier 1 Scenes - 0.5 million XP in 45 minutes
    Tier 2 Scenes - 1 million XP in 45 minutes
    Tier 3 Scenes - 2 million XP in 45 minutes
    Tier 4 Scenes - 4 million XP in 45 minutes
    Tier 5 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) in 45 minutes

    Tier 10 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) in 30 minutes
    Tier 15 Scenes - 8 million XP (Attenuated) in 15 minutes

    That's a good feature and benefit of increasing XP in lower tier scenes. It gives players the option to grind XP in many different scenes. :)

    Grinding in higher tier scenes will still be desirable because they give better loot and allow players to attenuate faster.

    ----------
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2021
  19. FBohler

    FBohler Avatar

    Messages:
    1,213
    Likes Received:
    1,264
    Trophy Points:
    113
    If they include anything related to a skill cap right now, they'll lose pretty much the entire die hard community. The game will end very quickly then.
    The time to do so is long gone, most of the players beyond adv lvl 120 have some skills in their 140s and even 150s, capping them below that threshold would make the player base straight up outraged, and would nerf pretty much anyone who put effort in the game for more than 3 months.

    We have a real problem right now with ERG being mindless boring button pressing that gives one of the best XP rewards in the game. They need to work around that by adding some very good and fresh scenes, at Tier 10 or so, with good amount of mobs, fair loot and mini bosses, in which a player at adv lvl 120 would solo and make around 8M an hour without any stretch. This would render ERG useless for higher lvl players, so it'll be used only for lower level players to grind a bit and move on to this next kind of scene.
     
  20. oplek

    oplek Avatar

    Messages:
    1,238
    Likes Received:
    3,017
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    I agree. It's [infinite progression] still bad game design, and we're paying for it daily. It's a rock and hard place of their own making.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.